"J'y serai?" cried Dorothy, mustering all her family pride to keep back her tears.
VI
Although fortified by the motto, Dorothy was still suffering from the memory of that afternoon, and when she arrived at the theater to dress and saw Tom Hewitt standing by the stage-door she tried to pass him without acknowledging his salute.
"Mr. Richards will be in front to-night," he told her, portentously.
"Oh, we're always hearing that," said Dorothy. "I don't believe it."
"It's a fact. Warren told me so himself. And Mr. Keal's come down with him."
So this was why Tufton had advised her to look her best to-night; the visit could only mean that the great man wanted girls for the autumn production at the Vanity. Dorothy began to cheer up. Even if Lily's behavior had disgusted Lord Clarehaven irreparably, such behavior would not spoil her own chance of being engaged by John Richards, and at the Vanity there would be plenty of titled admirers. No doubt most of them would be younger sons or elder sons who had not yet succeeded, but ... "j'y serai," murmured Dorothy. "It's a good thing that I don't fall in love very easily. And it's lucky I didn't let myself cry," she added, congratulating her reflection in the dressing-room mirror.
Every girl was painting herself and powdering herself and pulling up her stockings and patting her hair and, regardless of the undergraduates she had met during the week, preparing to act as she had never acted before. Dorothy took neither more nor less trouble with her appearance than she took every night.
This time rumor was incarnate in fact, for the great Mr. Richards came and stood in the wings during a large portion of the play, and Dorothy, convinced that the one thing she ought not to do was to throw a single glance in his direction, devoted all her attention to the front of the house. There were lots of flowers; but nobody, neither principal nor chorus-girl, was handed such a magnificent basket of pink roses as herself, and nobody who had not suffered as she had suffered that afternoon in the depths could have been so gloriously thrilled on the heights as Dorothy was when the curtain fell at the close of the performance amid the shouts and cheers of youthful art-loving England, and she was stopped in the wings by Mr. Water Keal.
"Come here, dear," he said. "I want to introduce you to Mr. Richards."